Shuttered Old City, lively Mahane Yehuda market share faith God shields the holy city from Iran

When the war between Israel and Iran broke out on Friday, Ricky Schlass, 36, decided to leave her apartment in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia and move to her childhood home with her husband and two children, ages 2 and 4.

Schlass grew up in a 700-year-old house in the Old City of Jerusalem, only a few hundred yards from the Western Wall.

“We do not have a shelter in our building, while my parents’ home, with its thick walls, is basically a mamad,” Schlass told The Times of Israel, using the Hebrew word for a reinforced rooms in a private residence.

As of Wednesday morning, Jerusalem had endured multiple siren warnings, but no missiles had struck the city. For the past five days, however, Israeli authorities have kept the Old City closed to non-residents as a precautionary measure.

“We are a very tight area, and the authorities need to maintain free access to the few roads available for emergency vehicles in case of need,” Shoshanah Selavan, head of the Jewish Quarter Community Council, told The Times of Israel over the phone.

On Tuesday, the Old City stood mostly empty, with police officers deployed at its gates to check the documents of those coming in.

Inside the ancient alleyways, minutes would pass without a soul in sight, the silence broken only by birds chirping and occasional church bells.

Almost all stores, including the iconic stalls in the market, were shuttered. Occasionally, one or two vendors sat outside, talking quietly or looking at their phones.

“You can see, everything is closed,” said Bassam, a resident and the owner of two souvenir stores not far from Jaffa Gate, who declined to give his last name. “There is nothing we can do.”

Only a sparse trickle of people ventured into the Western Wall plaza — a space that typically pulses with worshipers and visitors around the clock. Though the plaza itself remained open, access to the Wall was blocked off by a line of metal barriers.

Access to the Temple Mount from the Western Wall plaza was also completely shut down.

Selavan said that the Western Wall and the Temple Mount were both closed off for safety reasons.

Schlass led this reporter onto her neighbors’ rooftop with a scenic view of the holy sites. From there, they looked even quieter and deserted.

She said it felt good to be home.

“There is a holy energy here in the Old City,” she said. “The moment you cross Jaffa Gate into the modern city, the atmosphere is very different.”

Her parents’ home was tucked behind a secluded courtyard, where a lush tree spread its shade across the ancient stones. Nearby, a small table stood scattered with toys and watercolors, waiting for the children’s next art project.

“My children are young, and so the sirens do not scare them,” Schlass said. “They tell me they are not afraid of anything.”

Inside the house, Schlass’s 85-year-old father Moshe, a Holocaust survivor from Poland who moved to the United States in the 1950s and then to Israel some five decades ago, was resting and listening to the news.

“Somebody up there is watching over us,” he said. “It feels like our enemy’s strategy is backfiring in their face.”

Other residents shared their confidence in the Old City’s sturdy architecture against Iranian missile attacks.

“I do not need a bomb shelter because my house is a shelter itself,” said Albert Donigian, 74, a member of the Armenian community.

He said he was not scared.

“This is nothing new for me, we have a war every 10 years,” he said.

Donigian joked that he found the calm in the Old City “boring.”

“I am a man of action, but my wife does not allow me to go anywhere else,” he noted, laughing.

The man explained that one of his daughters lives in Haifa, where, unlike Jerusalem, Iranian missiles have impacted in previous days. She and her family are fine, he said, but their situation is more difficult.

“My wife, on the other hand, was in Greece last week, and she got stuck there,” he said. “Now she is on her way to our daughter, who lives in the US.”

Donigian expressed some pessimism about the current situation.

“I was in Portugal a few weeks ago, and people there were just enjoying life, including a lot of tourists,” he said. “Here, we live in misery, and we do not deserve it.”

“I feel that chances of peace are slim,” he added. “There is so much hatred between Jews and Arabs. I am Armenian, and I love both nations, but the wound now is very deep.”

The (almost) defiant shuk

Beyond the Old City walls, other usually bustling spots — from the trendy First Station complex to the upscale Mamilla outdoor mall — were eerily quiet, their walkways nearly deserted.

In stark contrast, the Mahane Yehuda Market — affectionately known as “the shuk,” using the Arabic word for market — buzzed with a very different energy.

Since the Home Front Command has allowed services considered essential, such as grocery stores and restaurants, to operate, most shops in the shuk remained open, displaying colorful fruit and vegetables, fragrant bread, and a variety of fish, meat, and poultry behind refrigerated counters.

Several restaurants and cafes also continued to serve patrons, as families strolled with their kids, groups of young people ordered sandwiches, and older shoppers purchased groceries, carrying them in old-fashioned trolleys.

Unfazed by the war, many shops blared upbeat Middle Eastern music, filling the alleys with a defiant vitality.

“We feel everything is okay,” said Deborah, who was having lunch with her husband and two relatives from abroad at one of the restaurants in the shuk. “We actually live in Rehovot, and they bombed right next to our house. We decided to come to Jerusalem for some quiet.”

Sitting across the table, Victor from California echoed her confidence.

“We are relaxed, we accept what is happening, and we understand,” he said.

“This is less scary than the riots in Los Angeles,” he added. “Here we feel protected; in Los Angeles, we don’t.”

Still, several vendors said that the situation is bleaker than it might seem at first glance.

“There’s definitely less work,” said Hagay, who runs a butcher stall in the market and declined to give his last name. “Business had already started dropping when they suspended the light rail for construction a few weeks ago — and now, with the war, it’s gotten much worse.”

“The people you see here are less than 10% of what’s normal in the shuk,” added his employee, Shay, who also did not share his last name.

Asked if they were worried, Hagay didn’t hesitate.

“This is our livelihood,” he said simply.

Yaron, who runs a dried fruit stall, echoed the same concerns.

“Business is slow — the number of people we see now is nothing,” he said.

Still, he expressed little worry about the threat of Iranian attacks.

“I trust the Almighty,” he said, smiling.